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A spelling mistake from antiquity
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I was flicking through pictures on Flickr the other day, in the Julio-Claudian group, when I saw a marble cinerary chest, dedicated by a sad Roman in the first century CE (or AD, if you prefer that designation). A cinerary chest, by the way, is what you put ashes into after somebody has been cremated, which is what the Romans did, in those days, much of the time. On the outside of this chest there is an inscription, in Latin, which reads:
D M
--
VLCANO . INCOP
ARABILI . ACDVL
CI . FILIO . NEDIMVS
ET . SINTYCHE . P . P .
V A M V D X V I I I
The helpful individual who posted the photograph suggested that the urn was dedicated by one Nedimus and his wife to their infant son, Velcanus, whose age at death was recorded at the bottom of the chest as one year, five months, and eighteen days (in Roman numerals, of course). He also notes that either this Nedimus or the fellow who carved the chest made a spelling mistake: “inco(m)parabili.” But we can no longer tell whose boo-boo it was.
The first thing I noticed was that the first word on the chest was the name of the god of fire, Vulcan, in the dative case, also spelled rather oddly. In proper Latin it ought to have been Vulcano but seems, instead, to have been Ulcano (or Vlcano, since the Romans made no distinction between V and U). Still, it’s to the incomparable Vulcan, god of fire and to this spicy hot deity who was in charge of those cremations, that these ashes were dedicated. Of course, they didn’t have hyphens in those days, so it’s hard to read the second word, as well as the fact that it has that missing letter.
The third word is decidedly peculiar, since there is no Latin word, acdul. However, our stone carver left off one of his handy dots to indicate a word boundary, in this case, and has divided another word in half. This actually should be ac dulci, modifying the following filio. In other words, the dedication is also to the sweet son, the poor lad whose remains are in the chest.
We see a dot, separating an apparent name, Nedimus. But this is not a real Roman name. Instead, it’s most likely the real Latin conjunction nedum, slightly misspelled, meaning “still less, not to say,” or, in other words, “nevertheless.” This is followed by one of those words that has been divided without a hyphen, a rather odd one, uset. I believe this should be the passive form ussetur, “(he) has been burned, cremated.” Probably our stone-carver was running out of room by this time. He may not have been fully literate, either.
He follows his account of the facts of the poor boy’s end with the observation, sintyche. This is probably not the name of the little tyke’s mama, though. The tail end is apparently Greek, the word tyche being the word for “luck, fortune.” In Latin, the proper word for “without” should be spelled sine, but again our stone-carver seems to have used an impromptu abbreviation. So, the whole thing essentially reads, “to the incomparable Vulcan and to the sweet son, (who) nevertheless was cremated, (being) without good fortune.” If there are any names here at all, they exist solely as initials, either the D.M. at the top (probably the babe), or the P.P. at the end of the main inscription (probably the poppa).
The VA may well indicate, once more in abbreviated fashion, that the infant lived (from vivere, “to live”) for one year (from annus, “year”). The M is likely to indicate the word for “month,” mensis, followed by the numeral V or five. Then there is a D for “day,” dies, followed by the numeral XVIII, which represents eighteen. The person who shot the photo may be right about this meaning the time period during which the child lived. Or it may represent the date of death, meaning the fifth month and eighteenth day, or May 18th, since the first century is past Julius Caesar’s calendrical reform.
I'd like to thank R.S. Heyer and his Latin grammar books for their kind assistance in puzzling this out. I couldn't have done it alone. I did take Latin in college, but Mr. Heyer's grammar books -- though a generation older than mine -- are much more thorough. He figured out the acdulci bit and I got the sintyche part. It took both of us together and both our grammars and dictionaries to make sense of uset. So there you have it. Even in the Olden Days, nobody could spell!
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